Episode 171 takes us through the John Deere Data Manager tool. From downloading the program off the John Deere Operations Center to transferring files from a local drive, Tony takes us through the functionality of the John Deere Data Manager tool and the first steps to traditional data transfer.
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Read Episode #171's full transcript:
Host: We get a lot of questions often, I should take a step back and say, we often talk about wireless data transfer, data sync, JD link connected machines, all of that type of stuff. We don't often discuss on this show the older equipment or the older technology. I often get this question around this time of the year, because planting should be wrapping up or is wrapped up and we got harvest around the corner, and with harvest comes many questions about variety locator. Now, don't get too excited about variety locator yet, we will get to that on the next episode.
Pay attention, listen to this episode first. Then in two weeks, when we release our next episode we will talk more about variety locator, but this is essentially your first step to making sure we can create those variety locator files. Now those of you with JD link connected machines, you have that ethernet cable connected to your 2630, or you're on the gen four platform, whether that be the 4,600 display on your armrest or you're running the 4640 universal display.
This episode does not necessarily involve you guys, but feel free to listen along. You might learn something on maybe a tillage tractor you got or something like that. What this is going to focus on is the John Deere data manager tool.
Any of you out there that need to transfer data traditionally, so via a USB flash drive. Now, this isn't just for John Deere displays. If you remember back at the beginning of 2021, we talked about third-party data. Now I don't remember, I can grab it real quick, back on episode number 138, we talked about third-party data and the amount of displays that the John Deere operations center can get data from.
If you're curious about that, I encourage you go back to listen to episode 138. We talk about the data and the platforms and then all of the different displays that this can come off. This episode is for you operations out there that maybe you're running a precision planting planter and you have a 2020 monitor, 2020 SeedSense monitor in the cab, or maybe those of you that have a red planter or with a Trimble display or Ag Leader displays, doesn't matter what it is.
This goes for combines too. It's not just for planting data. This is for all data across the board, planting data, application data, combine data, but we're focusing on planting data because the follow-up to this episode is going to be variety locator, but taking a step back again, transferring data traditionally.
In the past, with other applications or we go back to apex, everything was right there. We plugged the flash drive in, we upload the data and the data's there, now with the John Deere operation center being a web-based platform, we needed a way to get that data from the flash drive onto the operation center. I always call it like a bridge. It's a magical bridge that takes your data from a local place and puts it into the operations center.
Oftentimes people wonder, they ask me the question how do I do that? One of the ways or the way I should say to do that is utilizing the John Deere data manager tool. Within the operation center, so you log into your account, you're in the operations center and there is that more button.
If you click on the more button and you go down, you will see John Deere data manager. Now, what this is a download. Essentially you're downloading a program onto your desktop to be able to make that transfer from flash drive into the operation center. This is PC or windows as well as Mac or iOS friendly. Those of you, I think back to the Apex days, you couldn't run Mac or couldn't run Apex on a Mac. A lot of people wished we could do it. I guess you could, if you had the jail break, I forget what it's even called, parallel or something like that to run it. What we needed is you needed a PC in order to run the Apex program.
Now, this allows you to download this program and then transfer files ad because the operations center is web-based, you can utilize it on a Mac with an iOS operating system. What you do is you just click download. You go to the more button, you go to John Deere data manager and you click download. What that's going to do is it's going to go through the process of downloading this program. No different than what you would see if you downloaded a program onto your computer.
If you're in Google Chrome, I believe you click the download button and down on the bottom, you'll see the little download happen. I think Mozilla Firefox is up in the right-hand corner. I'm not sure where the Microsoft edge downloads go, but it downloads then you open it. Once that program is downloaded, it will create a desktop icon. This is how we're going to transfer these files.
What you would do is you would plug your flash drive into your computer. You would then open up the John Deere data manager tool. Now, the first time you do this, it is going to ask you to sign into your operation center account. That is linking your operation center org with the John Deere data manager tool. It essentially needs to know where am I going to put this data.
Now from there, what you'll have is you'll have the ability to browse. Now, if you have the flash drive plugged in, data manager tools should automatically recognize the files on the flash drive. It should pick in that from drop-down. Otherwise, you can go in, if it's a folder on your desktop or a folder elsewhere, you can go in and find that file to look for those data files.
Then, what you'll do is you'll have the two. Now, most of you are just going to have one organization under in the two drop-down menu. Now, if you are out there and you have partnerships with other organizations, you will have more than one organization in that drop-down menu. Just keep that in mind, majority of you aren't going to have to worry about it because you're only going to have one operation center org. Some of you out there may maybe your crop sharing, you are doing some custom work, things like that. Maybe you already have a partnership set up in the operation center.
That's a whole conversation for a different day. When you select these source of where these files are coming from, where they're going to, you will see a window and it will show you all of the files that it recognizes. It'll give you what the operation was. It'll give you some other data of what those file bits are. From there, all you're going to do is click upload. Now, after that, there's not a progress bar there's not a lot of stuff that happens, but if you look down in the bottom, I believe it's the bottom left-hand corner, it should say upload complete or finished uploading, something like that. That is going to tell you that everything has been uploaded.
From there, what you can do just to verify that everything has come in, is if you go back into your operation center account, you can go into the more button and click on files. From there, you should then see all of the files that have come in. It'll say data manager, and then it'll have a bunch of information for that file. It'll tell you what it was, it'll tell you the client farm field for that file. Whether it's documentation, its setup, should be documentation but there could be setup files on the flash drive.
It'll tell you when it was uploaded or when it was created. Then from there, it'll tell you if it's finished processing, if it's still processing, or if it's invalid, or if something bad or something corrupt happened to that file, it will tell you there. That is the first thing we need to do in conjunction with what we're going to talk about in two weeks with variety locator, this revolves around traditional data transfer. Again, 2630s without JD link and Ethernet cable, 2600 displays, any of your 2020 SeedSense monitors, Trimble displays, Ag Leader displays, Raven, Top Con.
There's a handful of them out there. If you're curious, if you've got a display and you're curious, go in, talk to your local RDO equipment store, go in and talk to your local John Deere dealership. If you're not in the RDO area and ask them. We can find out exactly what display you have and if that data is compatible with the operation center. Always remember that this isn't just a John Deere solution, it's a John Deere solution, but it's not just for John Deere Green only farms, we can have, again, red combines, red sprayers, precision planting planters, precision planting, yield data out of a combine.
Again, all of that that I talked about, again, go back, listen to episode 138 if you're more curious about the John Deere data or the third party, the structures of it, and all of the displays that are on there. Episode 138, we dove into that beginning of last year. With that, like I said, in two weeks, we're going to talk about variety locator. I know some people have already down south and I guess in other parts of the world have already gotten combining, variety locator becomes a very big topic this time of year.
I hate to say it, if you did not document your varieties properly during planting, you're not going to be able to get variety locator to work. That's always the first thing to think about when we're collecting good, clean, usable data is we got to do the steps on the front side. With variety locator, that starts with planting, making sure we're documenting those varieties while we're out there planting.
Hold on until next or two weeks from now, we will talk a little bit about variety locator, how to make sure those variety locator files are in or created first, and then in the display, and we have it turned on in the display, all of that stuff. Make sure you tune in in two weeks when we talk about that. Thanks again for listening. Hope this information was useful and we'll catch you on the next one.
